>>Cooperative Extension is a centuries-old process where the federal government, local authorities have come together to take the information from universities and distill it, or as we say, extend it, to the common people.

So this has been a successful program, as I say, for over a hundred years.

>>That's fantastic.

It's a great way to share information to people who don't have it.

>>Yep.

>>And I wanna say, this is kind of a perfect example of the information that's shared, is we have this wilting plant.

It's a zizia aurea.

What could be wrong with it?

People don't know.

And they would bring it here.

>>Exactly.

We provide accurate and timely diagnoses so that if there is a product to be used, we can prescribe the exact one.

Versus just going to a store and buying a bunch of different things.

So we're trying to protect water quality, bee and pollinators.

We're trying to do the best with the least.

>>Exactly, so we can have more sustainable gardens.

>>Exactly, sustainability is the key.

>>Yeah, absolutely.

>>But we do have to take care of the emergencies.

>>We do.

Be they home pests or be they out in the garden.

>>Absolutely.

>>And this service here, this office is a wonderful location to do so because it has a very special place.

>>Yes, the lab, we're happy to have what I would call the gold standard of the state.

Goochland has a nice one and so does Hanover.

>>So if you live anywhere, in any state in the United States, you have a Cooperative Extension office you can contact.

>>Exactly, and that's the key.

They are local authorities on, not just agriculture, but horticulture, arborists come to them, greenhouses.

Anybody that deals with the green industry will come to the Ag and Natural Resource.

But then you have two other components of Extension, which would be 4-H, which is the youth development.

>>Right.

>>And then you have Family & Consumer Services.

Which is the modernization of home ec.

>>Right.

>>Okay.

>>You can learn to can, you can learn to preserve, you can learn to sew.

>>Financial management.

They're doing the modern things too.

>>Well, I'm excited to see this beautiful lab.

>>It's just to your left.

So if you'll move that way, I'll follow you.

>>Absolutely.

Mike, this is awesome.

>>Well, thank you.

Appreciate you coming by and seeing this operational lab.

It's not a lot of glitz, it's really just pure science.

You're at the operational end of our process.

We have a triage area out front where we bring in large samples, then we have a clinical sample area where we can take the saws and whatever.

Behind us is the diagnostic, where we get the sample down small enough that we can bring it over here and have some fun.

>>Really start looking at it.

>>Yeah, we can visit an alien world, and we don't need a passport.

>>Nope.

>>As an example, today someone walked in with a rose sample.

They knew something was going on, but they weren't sure.

So they bring it to us, and we can put it under the microscope and take a look at it.

And as you can see, it's crawling with creatures.

And we can positively ID this based on this sample as the rose aphid.

>>Well, this is fantastic because me, I'm sitting here looking at on the monitor, so I can easily see these move around.

And I can also see that the people in the window at the library can also see this.

This is fascinating, what a great opportunity.

>>Well, it's a teaching tool, and, you know, if you see it, you believe it.

And rather than just trusting me that I'm seeing something in the scope, clients, we can take pictures here, we can take video and share them.

So, again, it's just another tool in our education process.

We do a lot of demonstration.

Specifically we have a demonstration garden outside.

>>Yes.

>>And it's where people can learn what works, what doesn't work.

And so, you know, this, again, that experiential aspect of Cooperative Extension.

>>You know, Mike, and I think of that garden as another portal for people to use to get in here.

And as they're walking through it, it's a great educational opportunity as well.

>>Yeah, a lot of people think about demonstration gardens, just, you know, planting, you know, beans and stuff like that.

But we have a lot of ornamentals, we have pollinator, we have almost a prairie planting in the back.

We try to encompass all these different ecotypes and attract not just the pollinators but also the people.

>>Yes, yes.

>>Because they wanna see, "All right, does this plant work in Chesterfield?"

>>Yeah, you even have companion planting examples out there.

>>Yeah.

>>And then in here, crawling into literally the microscopic world.

What else you got?

>>Well, we also had a homeowner bring in a pantry pest.

This is, let me see if I can get this one here a little bit closer.

This is a very common pantry pest.

It feeds on a lot of cereals and other things.

And it has a thorax that has kind of a saw edge.

So we call this the saw-tooth beetle.

It's not a structural pest, it is a pantry pest.

It's a nuisance.

But it does require that the homeowner go through a rigorous process of finding out where it is, and then vacuum, vacuum, vacuum.

>>Yeah, yeah.

>>This is not one that we want to encourage sprays because it's gonna be around food.

>>Yes.

>>It can be managed with mechanical processes.

>>Yes.

Oh, here's a very obvious one.

>>No, let's do the boxwood.

>>Oh, let's do the boxwood.

This is a pretty one.

>>Yeah, pretty in a bad way.

And unfortunately in 2015 we see that this disease kind of escapes and gets into the nursery, gets into the landscape, and it's causing a lot of havoc.

The diagnosis is the easy part.

>>Of boxwood blight?

>>Of boxwood blight.

What you do about it is gonna be the hard part.

>>Well, there's the dark spots that we can visually see on the stem.

>>Yeah, you can see.

>>Which is one of the visual diagnosis.

>>Three things are: you get defoliation, you get the blackening of the stem, and then you get a leaf spot.

And there's nothing else that looks like that.

But when you start to incubate these things, and that's one of our technical ways of encouraging fungi to grow, you'll see that they produce these stellate, almost crystalline structures that are exceedingly beautiful.

They contain hundreds of sticky spores.

>>Yes.

>>And that's how this fungus gets around.

That's probably one of our number one diseases that we're dealing with right now.

>>Back to bugs.

>>Other things that come in.

A lot of times people will bring us in materials that have some type of aberration on 'em.

People think that this is mite eggs or something like that, when in fact this is really just a good dose of pollen.

>>Yep.

>>But fortunately they gave us a good sample, and we see, I can bring this around a little bit here, we see that we have an insect egg factory.

And this is the cottony camellia scale.

These are basically just egg factories.

And you can actually see if I zoom in a little bit.

There's one of the crawlers right there.

If you don't have the egg masses, which they're pretty dramatic, you can't see this crawlers, then you probably will miss the identification.

It's easy to control if you have an accurate and timely diagnosis.

>>Right.

>>And then one that we were unfortunate to be one of the first in Virginia... >>Yay.

(Peggy laughs) >>Yeah, we're first in a lot of things, but this one is called the allium leafminer.

There we go.

Almost looks like a little sewing machine pattern.

This is where the female is depositing eggs and, the larva, it'll just mine straight through the leaf.

>>And people aren't realizing that this is such a minute insect that it's between the layers of the leaf.

>>Absolutely.

>>Well, Mike, this is fascinating, and I don't think many people know about this and to know that they have this resource available to them so that it will help them become better gardeners.

>>Well, that circles back to Cooperative Extension.

We are experiential.

You know, they can come in here and experience it.

But we give them the information to make a positive change.

Whatever the community needs, that's what Extension does.

>>Well, this is fantastic, and this lab is just such a wonderful resource.

>>Thank you.

>>Well, thank you for showing it to us.